Remember when we (along with pretty much everyone else not working at Atlantic Records) said pulling Estelle's album "Shine" off of iTunes was a bad idea? Well, apparently someone at Atlantic realized that this strategy was, um, flawed.
Guess what the ad on top of the iTunes store is right now? Yes, it's Estelle's "American Boy." Imagine that. The song has already rebounded to No. 20 on the iTunes chart today. However, the momentum it had two weeks ago when it was at No. 11 on Billboard's singles charts has been sapped.
And did yanking it from iTunes spur sales of the "Shine" CD as Atlantic execs hoped it would. Um, not exactly. "Shine" sales did jump 16 percent last week, moving about 5,400 copies, but those aren't really Kid Rock numbers.
In exchange for those sales, Atlantic funneled about 100,000 sales to the Studio All-Stars' knockoff version of "American Boy" and another 7,000 sales to the Starlite Singers' knockoff version, according to Soundscan. It also knocked Estelle's "American Boy" from No. 11 to No. 57 in two weeks. Fair trade?
PHOTO: Estelle for Atlantic Records.